An Afghan governor was killed yesterday when a bomb blew up his car near the capital Kabul, government officials said, blaming the attack on the “enemies of Afghanistan.”
It was not immediately clear if Abdullah Wardak, governor of the province of Logar, near Kabul, and a former cabinet minister, was killed by a suicide attack or a roadside bombing.
The Logar police chief, Ghulam Mustafa, said the governor was struck by a suicide car bomb near his home in the Paghman area near the city.
“He was targeted by a suicide bomber in which he, a driver and a police [guard] were martyred,” Mustafa said.
The governor had apparently been on his way to parliament, he said.
The interior ministry said it was a roadside bomb.
“This morning his car hit a bomb on the side of the road. The governor has been martyred,” spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
He blamed the attack on the “enemies of Afghanistan” — a term Afghan officials use to refer to Taliban militants and other extremists or criminals behind a wave of violence.
A body handling provincial governments also said the blast was caused by a roadside mine.
“It was a deliberate attack,” said Abdul Malik Sidiquee, deputy head of directorate of local governments. “It was the work of the enemies of the country.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Wardak, a long opponent of the Taliban, was the first provincial governor to be killed since the September 2006 assassination of the governor of eastern Paktia province, Hakim Taniwal.
Taniwal was killed in a suicide bombing that was claimed by the Taliban.
Wardak was a former commander in one of several Soviet resistance factions and the minister of martyrs and disabled in the 2002 to 2004 transitional government established after the ouster of the hardline Taliban regime.
Logar Province has seen a rise in Taliban activity in recent months, including the Aug. 14 killing of three Western women aid workers and their Afghan driver as they were driving to Kabul.
The killings, claimed by the Taliban, were the deadliest in years involving international aid workers.
The Taliban were in government between 1996 and 2001, when they were ousted in a US-led invasion launched when they did not hand over their al-Qaeda allies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS